The internet may have changed from blinking fonts to TikTok dancing; but one thing has never changed—people still use the internet to find the people they need to meet and the services they need to buy. After 25 years of writing websites, I’m finally going to share my simplified process to land on the first page of Google search results. Beyond any trend or trick, this is the well-worn path that has worked no matter how many times Google changes their algorithm. 

MAKE A LIST OF WHAT YOU COULD BE TOP 10 IN THE WORLD AT IN 10 YEARS

20 years ago I didn’t need to be the best yoga teacher in the world, I just needed to be the best yoga teacher in my neighborhood. Now if I want to offer yoga classes online, my competition just went from local to worldwide. I don’t just have to be the best yoga teacher that you can find on the Internet, I also have to be more engaging than the million other things you could be doing online. 

Do NOT make a list of hobbies or things that you might enjoy. (You’re allowed to have hobbies. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you have to monetize everything you do.) This is a list of passions that you want to spend the next 10+ years practicing. Website design and online marketing ended up being my 25+ year passion and it’s how I’ve made the majority of my income. I didn’t know that when I started. When I opened my first solo web design agency in 2005, the prevailing advice was to make a backup business plan for what if the internet turned out to be a fad and no one needed a website designed ever again. 

Peer into your crystal ball, imagine yourself 10 years into the future, and write down what they are going to say about you. For example, “Jazmin Hupp teaches thought leaders how to build their own websites.” OR “Jazmin Hupp teaches women how to use psychedelics, meditation, and yoga for self-healing.” OR “Jazmin Hupp offers silent meditation retreats, which integrate yin yoga, plant-based meals, and cannabis.”

PICK ONE PASSION

“But I’m a multifaceted creature of many passions!!” you tell me. 

I get it. I also have multiple overlapping interests. In the last year I’ve blogged about digital marketing, online dating, vegan cooking, psychedelic guiding, travel packing, saving money on groceries, Domination & submission, and designing decentralized events.

You don’t have to simplify yourself to be online but you do want to pick where to concentrate your resources/time. Let’s say you plan to write 12 blog posts a year. If you focus 9 of those posts on your main passion, you are much more likely to be found.

DISCOVER 3 WAYS SOMEONE WHO NEEDS YOUR PASSION WOULD BE LOOKING FOR YOU

Imagine waking up on a perfect morning and sitting down to your perfect day. When you open up your laptop there are three messages from three separate people who found you through your website. These three people are going to turn into your best clients yet. They are ready for what you have to offer and have the resources to pay you for it.

Write down everything you can think of about the three people who message you.

• How old are they?

• Where do they live?

• What do they do?

• Why do they need help?

• What have they already tried?

• Are they just starting to look into this topic or have them been researching it for a while?

• How did they find out about you?

• What’s changed in their life and made working on this aspect of their life a priority?

You can use aspects of your previous best clients to create the profiles of your future clients. 

Once you’ve created these three ideal client personas, it’s time to figure out what they typed into Google to find you. Put yourself in their shoes. Think about how long they’ve been working on this issue. Think about what they’ve already tried and didn’t work. Think about how much time, money, and attention your ideal client has to work on this issue. Coming from their perspective, what would you type in that search box?

Now once you have a general line of inquiry that your ideal client would use…you need to figure out how specific you need to get, in order to rank on the first page of search results.

From 2014 to 2019, I was the co-founder and CEO of Women Grow, which is an organization that championed female cannabis business owners. At first my goal was to rank for “women in cannabis”, which we did. However I found that just because people were searching for women and cannabis, it didn’t necessarily mean they were business-oriented. I then started to work on content and events to rank for “how to start a cannabis business”, and this led to higher quality clients coming in. After a few years I saw how I could attract women who were further into their journey by targeting “how to win a cannabis business license.” I saw that my ideal client’s needs and vocabulary changed as she learned more and refined her interests. Picking the right words will give you access to the right clients at the right time. 

REFINE YOUR SEARCH PHRASE 

The more specific the phrase you chose, the less competition there will be to rank for it. However the more specific you are, the less people who will be searching for that term. Your job is to pick the perfect balance of specific enough to be from your ideal customer but broad enough that there are lots of people searching. You can use tools like Google Trends or SEO Moz to see how popular different terms are in search (over time) and guesstimate how hard it will be to rank for that term. 

Maybe you have a few different phrases that might work. You can use the compare feature in Google Trends to see if the popularity of your phrases are increasing or decreasing. For example, maybe I’m trying to see which psychedelic I want to focus my content on for the next 5 years. By entering those terms into Google Trends, I can see which search terms are becoming more or less popular over the last 5 years (or longer).

CRAFT YOUR BLOG POST IDEAS

Create 12+ blog headlines that answer your ideal client’s top questions. Use the related queries in Google Trends to formulate headlines that are being searched for frequently. Blog posts that attracted clients to me included, How to Name Your Cannabis Business and 21 Questions to Ask Before You Become Co-Founders or Collaborate. I wrote that piece on naming your business in 2015 and it still ranks to this day without any changes or updates. 

KEEP AT IT FOR 12 MONTHS

Maybe you get 3 blog posts into your topic and realize it’s not really what you want to be doing. No worries, that’s OK. However, I recommend pursuing each passion for 12+ months because it takes time to see the results of your work. Don’t get discouraged in the short-term, you’re writing this content to be found for years to come. 

WRITE REALLY F*CKING USEFUL CONTENT

We used to talk about writing your content for search engines versus writing for people. After having my content sit on the internet for 20+ years and surviving every Google algorithm change, I always land on the side of writing for people. The goal isn’t just to be the first search result. The goal is to be the first search result that HELPS the person who reads it. If your content isn’t helping or entertaining your reader, there’s a million other sites that will. Remember people are usually interested in helping themselves first and then knowing more about the helper second. 

SHARE YOUR CONTENT

Take your monthly blog post and share it through every channel you use. 

Here’s an example of how I might edit my blog post for each channel.

• Instagram — make graphics with the top 5 points and a call to share it into a carousel post (you can have up to 10 images in a carousel post)

• Twitter — publish a 🧵 on the top takeaways with lots of opportunities for retweets or responses

• LinkedIn — publish a short summary of the article and link out to the rest in the comments or offer to send the full post to anyone who messages you their email address

• Facebook — publish some of the article with a casual photo of yourself and offer to email the rest to anyone who messages you their email address. Use lots of emojis. 

• YouTube — create a short with the top 3 tips

IMPORTANT!! Take the sales pitch out of these social shares. You’re welcome to ask your social followers to take a free action (like DM their email address) but stay away from trying to sell them something on social. In the same way we learned how to fast-forward television commercials, we are getting good at ignoring anything remotely like an ad on social media. Use social media to build your following and build trust. People don’t want to be sold to on social media. 

BUILD YOUR MAILING LIST OR SMS LIST

Over the years I’ve tried talking to my community via email newsletters, casual emails, snail mail, text messaging, Signal groups, WhatsApp, Facebook groups, Clubhouse, and more. They all have their pros and cons but email is the channel I continue to return to over and over again. I found email fit the pace of my business. I wanted to send a message and let people read it when they were in “business mode” for the day. I found it hard to hit the right timing with text messages. My content wasn’t urgent enough to need to be read right away. 

There’s a million free platforms you could build your list on top of but you’ll always be at the mercy of that platform. A few years ago, the trend was to start a Facebook group for your community, now most of us have been invited to so many thinly-veiled sales pitch Facebook groups that we ignore them. This is great for Facebook because it gives them an excuse to sell you ads to “re-engage” your community. Ideally you’d have your community in a system that you control so you don’t have to pay Facebook when you want to talk to them. 

MEASURE YOUR PROGRESS

After a few months it’s time to see if you’ve made any progress. 

• Ask each new client / buyer / investor how they found you.

• Using a tool like Google Analytics, check what search terms you’re ranking for and how many visitors are coming through. 

• Count how many new list subscribers you have.

• See if you’ve increased your social media followers in any channels.

Review what’s working. Not just what is giving you bigger numbers but WHERE your new sales are coming from. For example, you could have a ton of traffic from Reddit but if none of those visitors are turning into valuable connections, then you don’t want to create more content for Reddit.